I remember the arrival of the microwave in our Rotherham home more vividly than I rember the arrival of my two brothers. I love my brothers a lot.
The lights and sounds of the microwave felts like a logical, high tempo next step in the family kitchen where eating mid week felt chaotic at the best of times. Milk would be left out. Crumbs would gather. My brother and I could be found arguing about who got to read the back of the cereal pack: life before iphones wasn’t all imaginative play and conversation, I can assure you.
As we spilled milk, made crumbs, kicked each other under the table, the microwave looked on. It seated itself set back just a little from the head of the table on top of the fridge. No tucking it into the corner betwixt wall and work surface. None of that ‘make it look like a part of your cooker’ nonsense.
We tried everything in the microwave. . The flapjacks were flavoursome. The mash was inedible. The Chocolate Trio I tried to melt set on fire. Big chip fans in our house, my mum was over the moon when mccain invented microchips. That is until she tried them, “The thing with chips, really Abby, is that they need to be fried in lard.”
For a brief moment in history, nuclear families were hopeful that nuclear cooking was going to be as revolutionary as moving from washboard to washing machine. Mum and Dad were working one full time job and at least four part time jobs between them at the time. They’d frwquently pass like ships in the night, dad getting home on the bus from Sheffield about sixish, sometimes heading out later to collect the pools money. Mum was out the door teaching kids to swim, kids to do gym, leading a disabled swimming group in the evenings.
Whoever wasn’t working was taking me swimming training five nights a week or to piano and my brothers to whatever they were up to at the time. Like most families most places, there were pressures on time that microwave cooking promised to ease.
Was the microwave able to create more time? No. It was a kitchen appliance, not a time machine. Nevertheless, it’s gentle hum very quickly found itself harmonising with the sound of the clatter of car keys, the packing of swimming bags and the shouts of ‘time to go’. Bright, loud, and with a charged, pent up energy it fitted right in.
Cogito Ergo Mum 